Ambassador 12, page 22
Dekker had written notes in barely legible spindly handwriting.
I closed the book and put it in the bag.
I checked the drawers of the desk, but they were empty.
On second thoughts, I went back to the cupboard and collected the dressing gown and stuffed it in the bag. Then I looked on the bedside table and under the bed, but found nothing else I needed to take.
I handed the bag to my team outside before climbing back out.
In the time I’d been inside, a light had come on in the gatehouse at the bottom of the road. The sky was also getting alarmingly lighter over the ocean. I could see the road that ran along the ocean shore and ended at the gatehouse. The rocky point held a viewing tower or disused lighthouse.
The forms of Evi, Telaris and I thought Nicha were silhouetted against the light.
“There he is. Let’s get out of here,” Sheydu said. She sounded nervous.
We took off around the side of the house, but ran into Deyu and Mereeni around the corner, who held us back.
Mereeni said, “Someone is out there.”
There was, too. The headlights of a vehicle lit sections of grass.
“That’s the caretaker,” came Dekker’s voice from somewhere in the distance.
“Is he likely to be armed?” I asked.
“In this country, everyone is armed.”
“But dangerous?”
“He works for Patterson, if that’s what you’re asking. He’s a mean bastard.”
Best not to risk it. And also, Dekker would have quite a story to tell once we got out of here.
Reida knelt on the ground, next to Deyu with the hub. I could see text scrolling over his screen.
“All right, change of plan,” he said, his voice low. “People have discovered the hole in the fence. Also, the dogs are gone.”
“They ran off while you were inside,” Ynggi said.
So, we’d been discovered.
“We’re going down to the beach,” Reida said. “The pilot says they can come up close, and the people guarding this place will expect us to go back into the forest. But they’ll come to the house soon.”
“The house is empty and has been for a long time,” Dekker said. “This is Patterson’s beach residence, but he hasn’t been welcome in Atlantia for a few years now, ever since this mess started.”
A few of my team gathered around Reida and his map. They spoke in low voices about how to get to the beach. Reida said his data wasn’t detailed enough to tell him whether there were any fences, but it would be safe to assume that there were some.
Evi shouldered his rocket launcher.
“Come, follow as close as you can behind us,” Telaris said.
They set off along the edge of the lawn.
Deyu accompanied both of them, then Reida and we followed behind. I kept an eye on Dekker, both because he was the oldest of all of us, but also I wanted to make sure he didn’t do anything that would bring attention to us. I thought he was happy to get out, but exactly what he’d been doing here would need to be discussed once we were safe.
Dekker’s earlier words about the house being empty rang true. The grass was short but full of thistles and uneven clumps. We crossed a path almost hidden by leaves.
As we came closer to the beach, I became aware of a foul smell, like a cloth that had been sitting in water for too long.
We stopped at the high water mark. I presumed the beach was normally sandy, but it was now covered in a thick mat of rotting vegetation. I could see it in the glow of Sheydu’s light.
Long, blackened strands of what looked like algae, all stuck together into a hard mat.
Reida put his foot on it. The dried vegetation held his weight.
But the smell was something different altogether.
“Oh God, this stink is insufferable,” Dekker muttered behind me. “I thought it was bad up at the house.”
“Be quiet!” Sheydu said in Coldi.
I doubted Dekker understood what she said, but her tone was clear enough.
There were signs of activity at the end of the beach, where we could just see the roof of the gatehouse poke over the top of a row of bushes.
Voices. The sound of a vehicle. An alarm going off.
“The guards are onto us,” Dekker said. “If you have a way of escape, use it now.”
At that moment, an aircraft rose over the tops of the rocks at the tip of the inlet, glinting in the dawn light.
It was an Asto-built craft and would belong to the military. Not the one that we had flown on.
The invisibility current that allowed the ship to be near-invisible took engine power, so the pilot had switched off that capability, but the effects of it still lingered in the glimmers that edged the wings.
This was an attack craft belonging to the giant fleet I had seen in the shuttle bays at the military ship.
The craft barely cleared the tops of the rocks, glided over the beach and splashed in the water. Then it engaged the reverse thrust engines with a roar. No way those were going to keep quiet.
Several floodlights came on at the gatehouse.
People shouted.
Dogs barked.
“Quick!” Sheydu shouted.
The craft drifted across the inlet.
Sheydu ran across the algae mat and the others followed behind. I ran after Deyu.
In the middle of the frantic scramble for the water’s edge, my right foot cracked through the hardened layer and slid up to my ankle into a slippery mush underneath. I just managed to stay upright and warn Thayu behind me.
But my shoe was covered in muck and I could feel the water seep into my socks.
Ew.
The first of our group had reached the water’s edge. The craft had floated much closer and had turned the concealing current back on, which made most of the craft hard to see, but produced a weird effect where the metal touched the water.
Someone had opened a door, which made a brightly-lit rectangle that floated in the air like a portal to paradise.
A silhouetted person stood in the doorway, shouting to Sheydu on the beach.
Sheydu waded into the water. Someone tall and broad followed. Evi, I thought.
They grabbed the craft’s wing and pulled it closer.
“Quick! Get in!” Sheydu called.
We all had to wade through the water, which came to just above the knee. Deyu balanced her communication hub on top of her head. The person at the door helped everyone in.
The water was lukewarm and walking through it brought up a disgusting wet sock smell. When the crew member pulled me up into the cabin, threads of vile green algae covered the bottom half of my legs. The others were no less dirty. Reida had stepped in a deeper patch.
The pilot shouted over her shoulder, “Hurry up! Get in your seats!”
The last of the group clambered into the open door. Ynggi, Nicha. Thayu already sat next to me. Sheydu was the last, and she pulled the door shut behind her.
She dropped into the nearest seat, completely wet and covered in algae.
Through the window in the side of the craft, I could see bobbing lights on the shore.
People were running in our direction.
The engines roared. The craft shot forward. The force pushed me into my seat. Next to me, Thayu was still doing up her safety belt.
For the next couple of minutes, the craft climbed so steeply that speaking or moving around was impossible.
In a sliver between the row of seats in front, I had a view of the pilot’s controls. There were other craft in the area. I could see that from being familiar with the display.
Not long after, the craft evened out. I heaved a sigh of relief. That was one part of the plan completed.
“Huh, it seems you can actually do what you promise,” Dekker said.
“I don’t promise anything unless I have a decent chance of delivering it, regardless of whether or not I’m dealing with thugs.”
He gave me a pointed look. Oh, he had an elephant’s memory.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
When it was safe to do so, Sheydu got out of her seat. She took off her jacket and shoes and then her trousers.
The pale skin on her upper and lower legs was red with angry welts.
“Sheydu, what did you do to your legs?” Reida asked.
“I don’t know, but it’s uncomfortable. Do we have something for this?”
Mereeni dropped to her knees. “That looks horrible. Does it hurt?”
“It itches like mad.”
“Did you spill something over yourself?”
“No. I just walked through the water.”
“I think it’s the slimy stuff in the water,” I said. Something about contamination with algae stirred in the back of my mind. There was a small lagoon out the back of my father’s farm that would go green with foamy algae that smelled bad and made your skin itch. But I’d never seen it this bad.
I took off my very wet shoes and found that my skin, too, had gone red with little raised lumps. Now that I thought about it, it did feel itchy. I’d just had so many other things to worry about.
Nicha lifted his trouser legs and his lumps had progressed into thousands of little blisters. “Well, damn.”
Almost everyone’s skin had a red rash where the water had touched it. Now I fully understood why the house had been abandoned as a holiday destination.
Mereeni produced a bottle of lotion, which she used to wet a packet of little towels. She gave us each one to wipe the skin. Except Sheydu got two because she was by far the worst affected. I tried not to notice how she winced when putting the towel against her leg.
She was trying very hard not to show her discomfort, but to those who knew her, it was obvious that she was very unhappy. Ironically, Dekker had suffered the least because people had carried him part of the way.
My team was exhausted.
They didn’t say this, but I could tell. And we weren’t done yet. We had a long way still to go, and we would need to do more clambering from one craft to another. This craft was a fighter, not a transport vehicle and much too small for us for a long distance.
The pilot turned in a sharp circle over the ocean that glittered in the moonlight. I couldn’t see any sign of life down there.
You could land Asto-built craft on the water, but it required a lot of skill. They were nowhere near as stable and manoeuvrable as my own craft.
But the military pilots all had excellent skills. We touched down on the surface not much later. It was not until we had turned around and motored along for a while that I could see another ship, dark and menacing, floating on the surface of the ocean.
When we got close, one of the crew members opened the door. He stepped into the dark, where I could hear voices.
“All secure,” he called into the cabin a moment later.
I desperately didn’t feel like getting up, but we had to.
We had to balance over both wings to get to the second, larger craft, which was the same one that had taken us here.
The waves washed over the wings and my shoes were still wet from the last time, and probably contained residue of algae. My skin burned like fire. I could only imagine what Sheydu must feel like.
I shivered.
Inside the cabin waited Veyada and Amarru, handing out blankets to us.
We found places in our seats and strapped in.
“Where are we going?” Dekker asked. I noticed his face looked weary, with bags under his eyes and deep creases in his skin.
“Somewhere safe,” I said.
And because I figured I sounded terse, I added, “I’m going to bring together everyone who can help us defend Earth. We’re meeting in a safe locality that’s out of the way and that we can protect.”
He nodded and gratefully accepted the cup Veyada held out to him.
The crew pushed the two craft apart. Veyada told me that the fighter craft would return to orbit.
The pilot engaged the primary engine, making it too noisy to continue talking. I sat in my seat as the craft gathered speed over the waves and then disengaged from the water. We climbed straight up into the air.
By the time the craft evened out, Nicha had procured some food, which he was handing out. I was starving. The encounter with the algae and the rash on my legs made me feel feverish. I glanced at Sheydu, who was much worse off than I was. She was eating, but her face looked pale and she kept rubbing her legs.
She gestured I’ll be fine when she noticed me looking at her.
“Just make sure you get some rest,” I said.
She didn’t protest, and with Sheydu, that was probably a sign of how worn out she was.
We’d been on the road constantly since leaving Athens, and the fight at Nations of Earth had probably taken more out of all of us than we wanted to admit. Sheydu was not the youngest.
Amarru looked after Dekker with food, dry clothing and blankets.
He looked more relaxed, although also haggard and tired. But I thought he looked grateful, and before I headed off to bed, I needed to speak to him.
So I pushed myself from my seat—oh damn, the rubbing of my trousers against my legs made me itchy—and kneeled on the floor next to Dekker’s seat.
“You’re recovering?” I asked.
“Yes. Thank you,” Dekker said. “I’m sorry.”
“No need to apologise.”
“Yet, there is. I seem to recall that we’ve had certain run-ins in the past and I honestly thought that you’d ignored me as I probably deserved, but thank you. I mean it. My honest colleagues and family will thank you, too.”
Was it just me, or did he have the slightest North American accent?
I had never noticed this before.
“I’m afraid contacting your family will be out of the question for a while.”
“I understand. Jayde should be fairly safe. Sara is with him.”
“Sara?”
“Our daughter.” His mouth curved up. “She’s twenty-eight and doesn’t normally live with us, but thankfully, she decided she was better off at home than in Denver.”
“At home, in Rotterdam?”
“At Jayde’s apartment in New York.”
“You have a lot of connections with Atlantia?”
“I do. Celia and I have been working towards repairing the broken relationships with Nations of Earth. But we’ve all been taken for a ride by Patterson, not that he ever had more than a passing interest. But unleashing this force on us…” He spread his hands.
“So he is behind the attacks?”
“Yes, and no. America Free State is a pretty ineffectual, hopeless kind of place. But as you rightly identified, it gave rise to some ultra-conservative, purist groups that also contained dedicated military personnel who made their way into the space program.”
I completed the thought. “Who then went their own way? Let me guess. They failed to stop Nations of Earth taking full control of the program. They failed to take one of the few shuttles the program operated at that time to their secret locality, but they did misappropriate another shuttle and hid in deep space. They emerged occasionally to buy technology, mostly in places with poor rules and lax supervision, such as the Pengali lands to the south of Barresh. They cobbled together technology and developed some of their own. They tried and failed to create havoc in Barresh. But at that time, their unfolding probe was already underway with their grand aim to re-take Earth.”
“Something like that. Patterson hasn’t played a major role so far. His task appears to be to make it look like they’re also victims, and also to destabilise Nations of Earth, which they have done over the past few years. They got many people into the assembly who were sympathetic to their cause, even if those people rarely realised that they were being used. Then you pulled off a victory for the referendum. They hadn’t expected that, and it made them very angry.”
And here I was, having thought that the Pretoria Cartel had been responsible for the near-defeat of the referendum.
“Why didn’t you ask for help from us, or at least notify us what was going on?”
“I’m sure you would understand how bad that would have looked. We also didn’t appreciate how precarious the situation was. Nobody saw the drone attacks coming.”
“Not even Patterson?”
“He might have, but I still don’t think he had any say in it. He just sees the opportunity to further his agenda.”
“Which is: to get the evil aliens out.”
“Something like that.”
He met my eyes.
Even when I’d met him for the first time, he’d been much older than I was. His close-cropped hair was salt and pepper-grey and the rims of his dark irises were slightly cloudy. Heavens knew how he’d seen me at the time of our first meeting: an arrogant upstart with questionable alliances was a popular assessment of me back then. While I felt like the same person, a lot had changed since that time. People who would never give me any time were forced to take me seriously, or wanted to take me seriously, because I was the bridge to things they wanted. People like Minke Kluysters.
Well, damn it.
I thought Dekker and I came to that conclusion at the same time.
He nodded, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees.
Forced to take me seriously.
I was tempted to say, Enough with the games, but that would hardly be appropriate, at least not while we needed each other. He needed us, but we also needed him.
So I began, “Maybe we should start at the beginning. What was going on when you contacted me? Why was the communication cut off?”
“It’s a long story that goes back months—years, even.”
“We’ve got time. We’ve got a long way to travel.”
“Where are we going?”
“Right now—somewhere it will be hard for people to track us.”
“Into space?”
“The military is being shot at regularly. Would you join them?”
“I thought you said somewhere safe.”
“There are safe places on Earth.”
He glanced out the window. The sun had come up and cast an orange glow over the clouds underneath us.
Dekker started, “I don’t even know where to begin. The resistance to the agenda that Margarethe Ollund had set for joining gamra was always there. It became stronger when her retirement from the presidency neared. I needed some of these people to form a stable bloc if I wanted to get any of our agenda through the assembly. I’m not sure what you know about the process.”
